The Purple Knight's Path
For a commoner, the roads that led to anything worth calling success were few.
Especially for a woman.
Become a peerless merchant. Rise to head lady-in-waiting in a house of count rank or higher. Enter service as a maid and win a young master's hand. Or climb to the very pinnacle of the kingdom's greatest pleasure district and become the most celebrated courtesan of the age.
Birth that was humble made the path to success long and brutally narrow.
And that same path had once stretched before Rachel, born in a small village in the west of the Elperion Kingdom.
"Papa. Buy me a sword."
She was thirteen when she said it, following her tenant-farmer father into the fields as she always did, the request dropping out of nowhere.
"What? A sword, all of a sudden?"
"Yeah!"
"Why?"
"If I want to make you happy, I have to earn a lot of money, right?"
"…Hahaha. My girl, your papa is already happy."
"People are supposed to dream big. That's what they say. I'm going to be a noble's personal escort knight. It's safe, and you can make good money!"
"……Hmm. Rachel. Listen carefully. Nobles do not entrust their protection to women."
"Why not?"
"Well… because women are born weaker."
Weak.
By seventeen, Rachel understood that it had never been only that.
She understood it in the fourth year of the sword training she had begun out of sheer stubbornness.
It was innate frailty, yes—and the male supremacy that saturated noble society. To them, a woman was property. To them, a commoner woman was nothing more than a sex slave.
They would never entrust a woman with a duty that demanded a life laid down for honor and for the code of the sword.
It was unfair.
She was certain she could do it. She had talent—real talent—with a blade. And still she was not even given a chance. That was what burned.
"I won't accept it! I will become a personal escort knight!"
Stubbornness. Self-will.
Rachel never put the sword down. In the year she turned nineteen, her father died in an accident, and she began to put blood on the steel.
Her rage at the world had finally detonated.
She wanted to overcome it. She wanted to cut every last scrap of that injustice down.
She threw herself, of her own free will, onto the harshest road she could find.
That was when she went north—into the Winterfell Grand Duchy, still thrashing in the chaos of war.
She cut down whatever stood in her path. She trampled whatever she could reach. And in the end she earned a name: the Purple Knight.
And yet—
She failed, again and again.
At the selection trials for personal escort knights.
Bitter at the life she had lived, she applied to every trial held by houses of count rank and above. She always scored well. She always drank the dregs of defeat.
She did not give up.
And at the end of that road, at last, she became the escort knight of a count's house.
The Raphelion Count Family.
The obsession that had driven her toward success finally found its light, and the promise she had made her father—that she would succeed—was kept at last.
Of course, there had been a vulgar underside to how a woman knight became the personal escort of a count family's young master.
"Heh heh. My father was against it, but I spoke up myself and had you passed."
"I am deeply grateful. I will guard you with my life, Young Master."
"No need to go that far."
"Pardon?"
"Strip down to nothing—underwear and all—and I'll give you double the agreed salary."
"………."
Rachel's hand closed on the hilt still sheathed at her side.
Her first day as an escort knight. She came within a breath of taking the young master's head.
Fortunately—
"…Hey. If you're fine with just the agreed salary, you don't have to strip."
—under the weight of her overwhelming killing intent, the young master of the Raphelion house withdrew his crude offer, and disaster was averted.
Of course, his efforts to claim her body never truly stopped.
Even so, Rachel did not quit—partly for the money, but more because the work itself was almost absurdly easy.
Elden Raphelion.
The moment he felt threatened, he never borrowed another man's hand. He preferred to punish his enemies himself, a battle maniac who never flinched from blood on his own fingers. And he was, in truth, rather good at fighting.
Most opponents he subdued alone, which meant there was little for her to do.
In Rachel's eyes his technique was crude, half-brawling—but unlike the pampered sons of other noble houses, he was more than capable of protecting his own skin. She never had to waste herself on small fry.
Hired as an escort knight, yet assigned to a master who needed no escort: a life of lounging through her duties.
She told herself it was her reward—for a life of struggle and injustice, and for the will that had finally carved a path against fate.
If she simply let his endless dirty jokes slide past one ear and out the other, it was the sweetest job imaginable.
Five years passed that way.
"The brothel district is down West Road Eighteen."
Even when there was nothing for her to do, she always accompanied Elden when he went out. In any new territory, he made straight for the brothels first. After that came the taverns, where he drank himself into a public menace and raised hell. That was the order of things.
Until—
"……Let's go to a restaurant. Somewhere with a little romance in it."
—the order reversed.
It was strange, but she dredged up old memory and found him a place. And then—
Something's wrong.
That he permitted her to share his table was odd enough. That he asked her to become his teacher was stranger still. The dirty remarks he had once spat at her out of habit never left his mouth. And the lifelong drunk never so much as touched a drop of liquor.
…What is going on?
When they left the restaurant, he even left a tip twenty times the cost of the meal. In the commoners' quarter—whether tavern or brothel—she had never once seen him pay. The workplaces of the ruled had always been his free playground.
She never spoke first if she could help it. But curiosity forced the words out.
"You are not drinking today, my lord?"
"It's high noon. Who drinks at high noon?"
"…."
And when, exactly, has that ever stopped you? She swallowed the retort and asked something else.
"When you speak of a teacher, my lord—what do you mean by it?"
"Exactly what I said. You've watched me for five years. You know where I'm lacking. We start tomorrow. Be ready."
At his answer, Rachel thought—
…So he's serious about fighting now.
Waking to birdsong is one of life's quieter pleasures.
Especially when you rise late, with bright morning light already pouring through the window.
For Lee Junuw—who once dragged himself out of bed at six a.m. to the racket of garbage trucks and the grim business of getting ready for work—this kind of waking was pure luxury.
I rose into the clean morning, finished a quiet bath, and let the maids help me dress.
"Shall we depart, then, young master?"
"Yeah."
I followed Rendler toward the main keep, where the final evaluation would begin.
Lumiang's first full assembly with the candidates would be held in the keep's great audience chamber. It was a space not unlike a great hall, but reserved solely for members of the house and their most intimate retainers—a place one did not enter lightly, something almost sacred.
Which was why—
"I shall wait outside, young master."
"Alright."
—Rendler could not go in with me.
No one but those designated retainers was permitted entry. And even they had to submit to a full search by the guards before they were allowed through.
I passed the iron security and stepped into the chamber. The three regret-route candidates were already seated at a vast round table.
Where a great hall felt opulent, the audience chamber felt rigid and solemn.
"Hm? You…?"
I walked the red carpet toward the table, and the three of them looked at me as if I were something that should not exist. I ignored the frank stares and took my seat.
Then I decided to strike first.
"I am here only because I have yet to receive a formal confirmation of my withdrawal. I have not rescinded my intent to forfeit, so please do not concern yourselves."
I got the first blow in before I had to listen to any tiresome chatter.
Blund answered with an awkward laugh.
"Haha. Concern? Hardly. We were simply surprised—we never expected to see you again."
"Neither did I."
Deron spoke next, looking thoroughly put out.
"No confirmation of your forfeit, you say…… Perhaps that declaration of yours was nothing more than a scheme to draw the eye."
"Well, that is certainly possible, Young Master Deron. As always, your insight is remarkable."
"Haha. Are you serious? Then we've been thoroughly played. I never imagined you had the cunning to craft a plan like that."
……Even striking first, it seemed, could not stop their nonsense from scraping at my nerves.
The mere thought that I might still have to sit through fifteen days of this irrelevant, meaningless evaluation already made me want to sigh. I would have liked to give them a piece of my mind for twisting my pure desire to escape into something sinister—but more tiresome speculation was all that would come of it, so I answered with silence instead.
Talking would only make my mouth tired.
Let them invent their theories and damn me as they pleased. It was their specialty; a kind-hearted transmigrator could afford a little forbearance.
All I wanted was for this pointless evaluation to begin already.
Fortunately—
"Her Grace the Third Grand Duchess, Lumiang Winterfell, enters."
—the doors of the chamber opened, announcing that the beginning had arrived.
The beginning of the tear-soaked Hupijip.
For me, of course, it was the beginning of Plan B.
I rose with the three regret-route candidates as they sprang from their seats like coil springs. Every eye turned to the open doors.
And then—
Click. Click.
—I watched a woman approach the round table of the chamber.
A white dress. A white fox mask. White hair. She was white from head to toe, a woman like an angel.
"It is a pleasure to meet you all."
She took her place at the head of the table and offered her greeting.
"I am Lumiang Winterfell."
Behind the mask, blue eyes began to travel over the male-lead candidates, as if already hinting at everything that was about to unfold.
……
When that gaze reached me, I felt something subtle in it.
She smiled—and offered me a greeting of my own.
"Hehe. We meet again, don't we? Young Master Elden Raphelion."